ShockPanda Games amazing 3D base defense title, Cubes Vs. Spheres had it’s most recent update go live in the middle of the night, and all we can say about it? HOLY FRIGGIN CRAP! Not only did ShockPanda give us an awesome Survival Mode, but they gave us 3 different Survival Mode levels, 10 more levels, this time on Insane Difficulty, new Fire Cubes, Shield Cubes, Gravity Cubes, and a ‘couple surprises’, new obstacles and mechanics like portals, meteors, and dance pads, 4 new achievements, new leaderboards and more! Now developers who might be reading this, take note – THIS is what you call an update! The Survival Mode is absent of the regular scoring system, being replaced by scoring players on how many cubes they destroy. This might turn some players off, as those of us who group cubes together, take risks, and actually play with strategy to build up HUGE combos are not rewarded for it, and players who just toss spheres into the crowed at a constant rate will end up scoring the same. Though it might bring more players in to Survival Mode because of that fact. But in the end, it’s almost downright impossible to complain about more gameplay content in one of the best games of the year, especially endless gameplay content. With the Insane Levels, the old strategy of tossing a Heart Cube into the crowd of cubes and then just bombarding them with Fire Spheres when they’re grouped together doesn’t really work anymore. You’ll need to come up with some new gameplay methods to get through these levels. Insane is exactly the correct word for these stages, so get ready to have sweaty palms, a racing heart, and want to bash your head against the wall, while loving every second of it. The new cubes are a fantastic addition to the game as well, really mixing things up with the Shield Cubes that block your spheres right before they leave your base area, taking these guys out will take patience and complete awareness of what other cubes are close to you. And the Portals. PORTALS!?!? The perfect addition to a game that’s fairly graphically close to Portal. Everything about this update justifies how long it took for ShockPanda to get it to us, and with the price remaining at just $0.99 for this Universal game, you’d have to hate video games not to buy it.
Wizard Ops, Phyken’s 3rd Person Rails Shooter, has just been updated as well. This first update brings gamers GameCenter Support, a new mission, iCade Support, and bug fixes. GameCenter was easily one of the most requested features for this arcade type high-scoring game, so it’s great that it was added in this first update. The new mission, Helicopter Factory, boosts the difficulty of the regular campaign quite a bit, and not like the Survival level is difficult because there’s no health pick-ups, but the enemies are mixed up well, there’s a couple new enemies, new projectile mechanics, and includes a boss type battle at the end of the stage. It also feels slightly longer than the previous campaign levels. Hopefully this is a sign that the future levels will keep increasing in difficulty, making the game more balanced and fleshed out. This update does start the reputation of Phyken as a very responsive development team who works quickly to address issues, and add reasonable features that players are asking for, as well as adding on to it. If this truly is a sign of things to come from Phyken, they shouldn’t have any problems gaining a solid fan-base that will grow with (hopefully) each future release they might bring to the iOS.
